The incredible shrinking women: The skinny on TV’s size-zero culture

Size-zero models and glossy magazines bear the brunt of blame for women’s negative body image but, asks writer Jane Gordon, could TV’s increasingly waif-like stars present a greater threat to our wellbeing?

There are two inextricably linked trends in television right now: our screens are getting larger and larger, turning living rooms into high-definition home cinemas, while – conversely and rather more worryingly – the women who appear on them, in glossy dramas and ‘reality’ shows, are getting smaller and smaller. These days you need a 47-inch, wall-mounted, wide-screen-HD-ready plasma TV just to be able to see the shrinking female stars of Desperate Housewives, The Hills, Gossip Girl and a dozen other high-rated shows. The actresses and presenters in the programmes that women – particularly young impressionable women – devour are inching closer and closer towards a size-zero TV world that is perhaps more linked to the rise in eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia and obesity) than anything we might see on the catwalk or in glossy fashion magazines. Photographs of supermodels may be unsettling, but they are static images that we all know have probably been airbrushed and Photoshopped and are therefore ‘unreal’. But the incredible shrinking women we see in the TV shows that we love have a more profound, but generally ignored, influence on our own body image: we come to see them as living, breathing people to whom we can relate. Watching actresses such as Felicity Huffman (who once described herself as a ‘fat girl’) in Desperate Housewives, Rose Byrne in Damages or Blake Lively in Gossip Girl (to name but three) shrink in front of our eyes makes us question our own body size. And observing presenters such as Cheryl Cole in The X Factor, Amanda Holden on Britain’s Got Talent and Alexa Chung in It’s On With Alexa Chung turn from slim to skeletal adds to the growing feeling that what used to be thought normal is now considered (whisper the word) fat. Why, even Ugly Betty herself, America Ferrera – ironically TV’s one attempt to cast an ‘average-sized’ woman as the star of a major series – has slimmed down to a size six, posing the worrying question, where will it all end? With giant TV screens showing women who have evolved, through unnatural selection, into the human equivalent of a Bratz doll (Barbie being ‘too big’)? It isn’t difficult, though, to work out where the shrinking started. It’s been a slow-burning movement, according to actress Joan Collins, since the early 1980s, when she joined the cast of Dynasty, one of the most influential and aspirational ‘women’s’ drama series ever created. Back then, Joan was a ‘healthy’ nine stone and was told by the producers that she needed to lose half a stone to bring her in line with the rest of the female cast. ‘When we did Dynasty we had to keep under a certain weight, but that limit was a lot higher than it is now,’ says Joan. ‘If you look at Dynasty – because it’s still on every day – and you look at Desperate Housewives, we are at least a stone heavier than those girls [on Wisteria Lane].’ The timeline tracing the slender-toning of women on TV, from Dynasty to Desperate Housewives, reveals a number of programmes that have played key roles in the move towards size zero. Remember Lara Flynn Boyle in Twin Peaks (1990-1991), Pamela Anderson in Baywatch (1992-1997), Calista Flockhart in Ally McBeal (1997-2002), Sarah Michelle Gellar in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) and, most pointedly, Sarah Jessica Parker in Sex and the City (1998-2004)? But responsible for the greatest impact of all on the changing shape of women is Friends (1994-2004). Research carried out by Canada’s Ryerson University revealed that watching the beautiful and progressively thinner Courteney Cox Arquette and Jennifer Aniston had a detrimental effect on women’s self-esteem even when they knew not to see the actresses as ‘real’ role models. Separating fantasy from reality – according to Dr Linda Papadopoulos, psychologist and author of a report into the influence of unrealistic, airbrushed images of actresses and models on young girls – is the key to limiting the impact of these shrinking TV stars on our own feelings about our bodies. ‘The average size of 80% of women on television is a six to eight, and the average size of 80% of women in the UK is a 16,’ Linda explains. ‘There is something like one celebrity to every 100,000 real women. But what do we do? We don’t compare ourselves with the vast majority of the population – to our neighbours, colleagues or relations – no, we compare ourselves to a handful of A-listers whose livelihood depends on their looks, and who have nutritionists, stylists and personal trainers to help them to maintain what is usually a very unnatural and potentially unhealthily low weight.’ Linda urges us to challenge these ‘ television norms’ – because they are not norms, they are exceptions – and instead look to the people around us for suitable female role models. ‘We need to become TV literate and see these shows for what they are – fantasies. Watch them and enjoy them, but remember you live in the real world. Trying to look like Teri Hatcher in Desperate Housewives is neither possible nor desirable. Most women are far too busy – working, raising their children and running their homes – to resemble the inhabitants of Wisteria Lane. And it’s a good thing too, because then we are offering the next generation proper female role models, whose livelihoods don’t depend on how thin they are.’ The really worrying thing, though, is that if this shrinking doesn’t stop, the next generation might regard Teri Hatcher as just a little, well, overweight. Because the programmes young girls are watching today – US shows such as Gossip Girl, The Hills and 90210, as well as UK equivalents such as Skins and Hollyoaks – are peopled by actresses who are so skinny, they would make the luscious Joan Collins, at her Dynasty peak, seem positively obese. Article by Mail Online *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      * My friend Lauren sent this article to me and I thought it was really interesting. I never thought about it, but I think Jane Gordon is right – actresses and spokespeople on television and movies definitely can have a larger impact. Especially considering now photo manipulation in advertising has become more mainstream. People are more aware that models are not necessarily what they seem. But when people see living, moving, breathing people with certain body types that are highly admired, it’s felt on a much deeper level. We can’t completely blame celebrities  – they are also highly pressured by society (not to mention highly criticized). But what you’ve got to keep in mind, as the article points out – is that it is their JOB to look like that, and they have the most skilled experts and the biggest wallets to help them achieve that. They aren’t the norm – we are. And we need to rock that!